7 September 2019 | New Scientist | 45upward trajectory: Europe’s second-biggest
delivery company, DPD, for example, saw
a doubling of the number of people who
returned items between 2017 and 2018.
Finding ways to help customers avoid
returns is among the biggest things we can
do to stem the tide of delivery-related traffic.
In fashion, where return rates are among the
highest, there are options. Designers can be
smarter about the sizing of their clothes, for
instance. One group of academics and major
UK retailers is using 3D body scanners to
identify the size and shape of 11,000 people
in the US. That information is used to create
more representative sizing and cuts for clothes
compared with the conventional method of
basing designs on one supposedly
representative body model.
Ultimately, if anything is to change,
consumers must change their behaviour,
which is easier said than done.
“I definitely shop online,” says Wright,
who knows the impact of on-demand
deliveries better than most. “Do I feel guilty?
I mean, a little. But it’s the bourgeois
democracy and capitalistic ideology we live
in,” he says. He surely has a point: no one can
transform the last mile on their own. But if we
all make the right changes, we might just turn
this juggernaut around. ❚lidar-enabled device called the FedEx SameDay
Bot that will be piloted in US cities over the
coming months. Another start-up, Starship
Technologies, has been testing its robots in
Washington DC for more than a year, and
delivered its first package in Milton Keynes,
UK, in November 2018.
These robots are electric, meaning they
are potentially emissions free, and they don’t
contribute to traffic congestion. There is also
evidence that we would have little trouble
accepting them. Researchers from Harvard
University recently had a robot posing as a
delivery agent for the fictional start-up Robot
Grub approach a student dormitory and ask
people to let them in. Sixteen out of 21 people
did so, suggesting that, if anything, we trust
robots a little too much.Return to sender
The problems with home delivery are
compounded by one thing above all:
many deliveries take more than one attempt.
Drivers often arrive to drop off a parcel only
to find the recipient isn’t at home. That can
mean they have to take it to another depot,
then it has to come back again, multiplying
traffic and pollution.
That many online retailers offer to return
packages for free has an effect on how we shop,
too. Packages ping-pong between buyers and
sellers, with many customers conditioned to
over-order and return. About a quarter of items
bought online in the UK are sent back for
refund or exchange. That figure is on a rapidChris Stokel-Walker is a
freelance journalist based
in Newcastle, UK, and author
of Youtuberscompany having to make a risky investment in
unproven strategies.
One of her ideas is to introduce a courier’s
courier: a single, centralised carrier that would
organise deliveries for various firms in an area.
That one company would be a single point of
contact for city groups, removing duplication
of vehicles and alleviating the fight for parking
spaces. The carrier would be independent
of the others, so no one firm would have a
monopoly, but it would share resources.
London’s Gnewt Cargo already carries out
some last-mile deliveries using electric vans
on behalf of several companies.
More radical still would be to remove
drivers from the equation entirely. Doha-based
company Airlift and Dutch start-up Geeba
Technologies are testing deliveries by drone
in Rotterdam, while Israeli firm Flytrex is
delivering packages from Icelandic
e-commerce company Aha to around half of
Reykjavík. Wider uptake will be challenging,
however. “The question is: where does the
drone do the delivery?” says Wise. Flytex’s
drones hover outside a building, then lower
the items down on a cord. That won’t work
everywhere.
An easier way to get robots involved may
be to have them remain on the pavement.
In January, a small, six-wheeled blue and
black box began trundling along streets near
Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. These Amazon
Scout robots are currently being accompanied
by a human, but the hope is they will
eventually be able to deliver packages alone.
FedEx has also revealed a similar-looking
“ Hamburg in
Germany has
banned all
commercial
vehicles from
its city centre”
4003002001000SOURCE: UK DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT SOURCE: AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT AND REGIONAL ECONOMICSVans Cars Motorcycles Lorries BusesRise of the van
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